Smith is also an entrepreneur. She published a book entitled Lies My Kid's Teacher Told Me in 1996, and a follow-up entitled, Tools of the Trade a few years later. She was also the owner of Gem Records for a time. In 1996, she was nominated for Manitoba's Woman Entrepreneur of the Year award.

Smith was elected to the Manitoba legislature in the 1999 provincial election, as a Progressive Conservative candidate in the south-central Winnipeg constituency of Fort Garry. She narrowly defeated New Democrat Lawrie Cherniack by thirty votes, in one of the closest constituency races of the campaign. The New Democratic Party won the election, and Smith served as the Progressive Conservative critic for education and justice.

In 2002, as justice critic for the Manitoba Progressive Conservatives, she spoke against a bill which provided adoption rights to same-sex couples in that province. Smith argued that her party did not oppose same-sex adoption rights as such, but that the proposed legislation was flawed.[1] In a June 2005 parliamentary debate on same-sex marriage, she stated that, "If (her daughter) decides to get married, she will know that the meaning of marriage is the union of a man and a woman. If she chooses otherwise, it will be her choice." The result of the bill, she said, would be to "cause marriage to just go away with the stroke of a pen." She also claimed the bill was discriminatory against married couples.[2] The Toronto Star reported that Smith broke down in tears during the debate.

In 2004, Smith was selected to be part of the Canadian delegation assigned to travel to Ukraine and observe a court-ordered repeat of the second round of voting the Ukraine presidential election.

Smith defeated Duguid again by a significantly larger plurality in the 2006 federal election, as the Conservatives won a national minority government. Smith along with the Conservative government were re-elected in the October 2008 federal election to another minority government. In 2006, Smith introduced a private member's bill, asking parliamentarians to condemn human trafficking and come up with a comprehensive plan to combat the problem.

Also in 2007, Smith introduced a private member's bill called the Clean Internet Act (Bill C-427). The bill was passed unanimously, and set in place a strategy to combat human trafficking globally by opposing such trafficking across international borders, specifically in the case of women and children being trafficked for sexual purposes.[7] In her words, the bill would "... prevent the use of the Internet to distribute child pornography, material that advocates, promotes or incites racial hatred, and material that portrays or promotes violence against women."[8] Part of the bill proposes a "know your subscriber" requirement for ISPs and would mandate them to deny Internet access to offenders. Also, it proposes to give special searching powers to the Ministry of Industry. The above features have led it to be criticized as something that "... would not look out-of-place in countries that aggressively censor the Internet."[9]

In her column, "Sex traders, keep your hands off our children!" (The Province, July 29), Smith asserted that "the aver-age age of entry into prostitution in Canada is between 12 and 14 years of age."[10] In October 2010, Smith conducted the inaugural Honouring Heroes Award Ceremony at Eastview Community Church, an annual event recognizing people who have fought to support victims of sexual trafficking.[11]

In 2012, Smith presented human-trafficking-related Bill C-10 to the Senate of Canada. The bill was eventually passed as the Safe Streets and Communities Act, a policy of the Canadian government.[12] While Smith was in Ottawa to present Bill C-10, she was also scheduled to speak on the talkback panel in conjunction with the human-trafficking-related play She Has a Name.[13]

Smith proposed and claimed to be working on, in July 2013, a bill that disallows access to pornography online for all Canadians by default unless they choose to opt in, similar to earlier legislation put forward in the U.K. by British Prime Minister David Cameron. Details of what content specifically would be deemed "pornographic" and blocked were not provided.[14]